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Sunday, February 10, 2013

Patchwork and Ruffles and Color, Oh My

I have to say, despite my love of fashion, I'm not one to spend much time perusing the fashion sites, looking over the various designers' collections and making notes of things I want to knock off.

It's not that I don't admire the artistry, the fantasy, the complete ridiculous luxury of the couture collections; I just generally look at it as moving art, not as something I can distill down into something wearable by me in my everyday life. Lately my sewing has been about filling gaps in my existing wardrobe, not concocting fantasy items, but this . . . now this is different.

This skirt from Jean Paul Gaultier's 2013 spring couture collection hits me in so many ways it's not even funny.

Maybe it was my early exposure to Cher (back in the Sonny-and-Cher, Gypsies-Tramps-and-Thieves days).

Maybe it was my mom's closet, where there was a black curly wig and loads of hoop earrings and jangly bracelets to parade around in.

Maybe it's my love of Victorian crazy patchwork, which was well formed even before I inherited a silk crazy quilt from my great grandmother, a piece so gorgeous - and fragile - that I don't often take it out of its tissue paper shroud.

But a gypsy-inspired multi-colored patchworked and embroidered wonder of an almost-flamenco skirt?

Oh, be still my beating heart! I literally got a little bit dizzy when I saw this thing.

I saw one photo on the blog Plays with Needles, and it led me on a search to find the whole skirt, and in the process, the whole of Gaultier's spring 2013 collection.

Which was lovely, I have to admit, loads of eye candy for any fashion lover, but after 47 photos, this skirt was still my favorite.

And even though I'm not thinking about making anything like this right now, I have to say that this is actually a couture piece that I could see adapting into a wearable-by-me item.

Obviously it can't be floor length, and those lovely flamenco ruffles would have to be modified, but you get the idea.

And on to more mundane things, like the bad weather. Which we did not get. Honestly, I'm getting so tired of the snowpocalypse forecasts that I've stopped listening. Since when is a foot of snow a national emergency? It used to be called an excuse to go sledding.

Besides which, we got about an inch, and most of that melted and turned slippery. When I went out at 6:00 a.m. to feed the chickens, I expected to find snow. It was cold, and there was a little crust on the back steps and the coop tarp, but other than that, it didn't look any different than it did on Friday. I fed the girls, gave them some fresh water and put their coop warmer in the microwave for 5 minutes and went back to bed, assuming the worst was yet to come.

Three hours later, I got up again. Still no snow. It must have been worse further north, because most of the farmers didn't make it to the market today.

The worst effect of WinterSuperstormNemo on my weekend? No kale for the soup I made this afternoon. Oh, the humanity.

5 comments:

I IM'd w/ a friend in central CT this morning. Snowballs, not snowflakes, fell out of the sky. They got 29" overnight and 9" in a single hour. After they shoveled their driveway, the wind blew all the snow and more back onto the driveway.

Another friend in MA got 30"+.

Consider yourself and Philadelphia lucky.

Honestly, speaking as a meteorologist, can you imagine how NCEP called it so well in both the timing and the areas that will be worst hit? They pretty much nailed the position when the two jet streams would merge back into one, and they called it days in advance.

It's not their fault if local news exaggerates the official NCEP predictions. Local news is infamous for exaggeration of storm potential, but the government scientists at NOAA NCEP nailed the forecast.

Karen, I know exactly what you meant about that feeling when something strikes a very real chord in you! I've realized that, for me, it is actually a feeling... Sort of in my middle and I often have a little involuntary indrawn breath! The dress is amazing and I immediately thought of using it as inspiration for some sort of fancy-fabric, casual jacket... Which would get a lot more wear in my life style than a skirt. Looking forward to seeing what its inspiration leads you to produce.

No bad weather in No. VA either, for which I am grateful. That is the most beautiful skirt EVER. A work of art. I need one just to look at. I'm doing silk patchwork right now; how did he know? I think I'd translate the idea to a patchwork panel on a skirt or top, because patchwork is very heavy to make a whole garment out of. I do like figuring out the engineering challenges.

Karen

About Me

Writer, packrat, cat lady, mad sewer, book hound and anything else you can think of that requires accumulation in numbers.

I can't remember a time when I didn't make things. Now I'm a recovering stasher belatedly discovering my sense of thrift. This is a chronicle of my journey to take my passion for refashioning and recycling and turn it into something more . . . and perhaps set me free from cubicle-land once and for all.